ABSTRACT
Thackeray, who, with all his scorn for the ridiculous and the outre, usually ignored such criticism, for once let himself go, and replied in preface to second edition of The Kickleburys, in so scathing and severe, though so intensely amusing, a manner, that it is difficult to believe it came from his pen. Thackeray was about to venture into new field. He had been successful as a magazine writer, and had acquired fame as a novelist—circumstances now compelled him to become lecturer, and it was announced that at Willis’s Rooms. Meanwhile the lectures were being delivered in the provinces, and they were, as a general rule. He repeated the lectures in New York, and read them in the suburb of Brooklyn. There he saw a Beatrix Esmond, to whom he lost his heart, he declared, and met the great Barnum, who wanted him to write something in the first number of an illustrated paper in imitation of the London News.
